Martin Johnson's England can head into their World Cup quarter-final against
France with an extra spring in their step after Sonny Wool, the psychic
sheep, backed the men in white to beat Les Bleus - and he's yet to be wrong.

With the likes of dwarfgate, blondegate, bungeegate, ballgate, hotelgate and any other gate you can think of having dominated the headlines, England would be justified in thinking that the world is against them as they prepare to face Marc Lievremont's men.

However, hope is at hand from the most unlikely of sources. For those of you who don't already know, Sonny Wool is Paul the Octopus reincarnated - a mystic beast who can forsee the results of sporting fixtures through the power of his belly.

Two indentical bowls of food are placed in front of Sonny, with a different country's flag on either bowl. Whichever bowl Sonny eats out of, that'll be the team who wins, and, remarkably, he's been correct every single time.... so far.

And with the quarter-finals now just three days away, Sonny Wool has put his reputation on the line by predicting not just one but all four last eight results.

Mark Stafford, head rugby bookie at the New Zealand TAB, said: "I don’t agree with a couple of Sonny’s choices, and I think the best underdog chance all weekend is Wales to get up and pull the wool over the smiling eyes of Ireland."

And for any disbelievers out there, Sonny's owner, Beverley Dowling, has insisted they do everything to ensure his sheepish predictions are fair.

"We don't do any training through the week and we swapped the food over to the left-hand side because we had a few people saying we're being baa-ad, so we changed it over to prove things."